


The Spare

by Echo (Lyrecho)



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: For Want of a Nail, Gen, au where stella is the youngest nox fleuret, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 15:37:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11762994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrecho/pseuds/Echo
Summary: The third child, a second daughter. Not heir to the throne nor blessed as the oracle. Stella Nox Fleuret isn't the girl that the gods have written out a destiny for.(Too bad for them that she's the one they got, then.)|Tumblr||Twitter|





	The Spare

**Author's Note:**

> if this looks familiar, it's because I finally moved it over from my tumblr

Stella Nox Fleuret has always known she is the spare.

The youngest of three siblings - her brother the heir to the kingdom, her sister to hold the mantle of Oracle; if either of them were to fall she could easily take their place. Or, you know, both of them. She's kickass, just like her mother. She could totally be both oracle and queen if she wanted to.

Not that she did want to, since being the Nox Fleuret child that is Not An Heir means she isn't forced into as many lessons as her siblings. She's got more freedom. She doesn't need to learn flower arrangements. She can play in the gardens and rip the flowers up if she wants to

One of the boys that work under the caretakers yells at her. He must not recognise her, otherwise he wouldn't dare. Stella's reputation has spread far and wide and her legend precedes her. Even those in Niflheim probably know about the fury of her fists.

"Get out of the flowerbeds!" He's yelling at her with his face steadily reddening. Stella ignores the torn corpses of the flowers she ripped up as she steps out onto the path and stares at him instead, fascinated.

"You're very mad, aren't you?" She asks. "Why? They're just flowers."

He sputters. Apparently 'just flowers' doesn't compute well for him. He'd probably get along well with Luna.

"They're sylleblossoms!" He snaps out. "They only grow in Tenebrae, and you think its okay to just rip them up like weeds?"

Attendants rush out of the palace before Stella can answer. She watches the boy pale as she's led away.

Oh. He must have realised she was a princess.

•

There's a new prince in the palace, and Ravus doesn't like it. Stella laughs when her big brother pouts. She likes Noctis, only one year younger than her. Luna's monopolising him though, because he's 'special,' like her, and that's something Stella scowls about alongside her brother. _They're_ special too.

Her mother laughs, and tells her that if she really wants to, of course she can play with Noctis.

There's no mistaking Luna's dismay as Stella snatches the handles of Noctis' wheelchair out of her hands. She laughs, and Noctis pales.

Good. He's a smart one.

•

Noctis tries to get them to play with him together, but soon learn its not the smartest idea. Though the Nox Fleuret sisters love each other deeply, Luna likes books and strolling through the gardens, discussing fairytales and weaving flower crowns from sylleblossoms. Stella prefers finding cats and dogs to feed in town, and fighting. Noctis is still wounded, and can't get out of his chair for long, but Stella manages to drag him to one of her training sessions. She's elegant with her rapier, faster than Ravus with his sword or Luna with her trident, and seeing how Noctis stares at her as she moves through her forms, eyes wide and lit with amazement, she is filled with a buzzing warmth, right down to her toes. She vows to show him how good she is in hand to hand, too - just as soon as he's 100% better and its okay for her to grapple him.

•

Tenebrae falls. Ravus joins the enemy. Luna becomes a saint well on her way to martyrdom.

Stella...is alive, and she knows why.

She's the spare.

Her hands clench into fists. Her nails dig into her palms, biting half moons into her flesh.

Her blood is hot, like her anger.

She holds onto that heat. She'll need it. Already, Niflheim's chill is spreading across Tenebrae, and _she_ doesn't have a goddess watching over her to protect her from the surrounding winter.

•

She nearly chokes when she hears the news.

"A peace treaty?" She stares at her sister, eyes wide. In the background, Ravus has settled against the wall, and is glaring - not at her, or anything in particular; just in general. Nothing new there. "For real?"

Now Luna's frowning, too. "Stella," she says. "Your marriage to Noctis is a stipulation of the treaty." There's an undercurrent to her voice that has Stella wondering if her sister is jealous. Luna is the one that has kept in contact with their mutual Lucian friend via magical dog relay, after all. Stella hasn't communicated even a single word to him since he'd screamed for her and Luna when Tenebrae fell around them - unlike her sister, standing silent and stoic, she'd screamed back.

Well, of course Luna isn't the one going to be wed. She's too useful where she is. Better for the empire to waste the spare on the enemy's son and heir than to risk the oracle. The fact that its Niflheim makes it seem somehow worse, but Stella knew this was always going to be her fate. The third child, a political match would always be the best she could hope for.

She shrugs, tries to play it casual. "Its not too bad," she grins. "I've seen pics. He didn't grow up too scrawny."

Luna's cheeks puff up like she's holding back the physical embodiment of her ire. Stella raises a brow. "Can you please take this seriously?" Luna pleads. "The empire cannot be trusted. I can't help you if you're in Lucis."

"Ravus will be with me," Stella says. None of them mention that even if Stella had an army at her side, there would likely be nothing any of them could do. She's at the mercy of both Niflheim and Lucis here; her life a pawn held between two opposing sides.

Huh. She looks at her siblings, the two people she cares for most in the world. What else is new.

•

Nyx Ulric is great. Stella doesn't know if she wants to kiss him or punch him. Maybe a little of both. He grins at her, wicked and smug and more than a little taunting, and Stella wonders if he wants her to punch him, too. The smirk he's wearing certainly suggests so.

But he's just her driver, and soon enough the best thing she'd seen since crossing the border is gone. A shame.

Worse is the fact that she's being led to an audience before King Regis. Stella has nothing against her husband to be, but she's not as forgiving of his father as Luna is. Maybe the fact that they had stayed behind was their own choice, slipping their hands from his grip - but he'd still left Ravus behind without a second thought; left him screaming over their mother's broken corpse.

Stella understands why and can't begrudge that he had his reasons...but logic has never meant much to her anyway, so screw him. She doesn't like Regis Lucis Caelum. She refuses to call him a king even in her own mind. _She bites her thumb at him_.

He still smiles at her, though, and when he apologises, it seems genuine. Her fists are clenched. She needs to hunt down someone punchable, soon. She can't attack the king. Where did Ulric get to?

•

Lucis falls. Somehow, Stella gets stuck with a ring meant for Noctis. She doesn't know much about the destiny he shares with her sister, but she knows enough - enough to realise she probably wasn't the sister meant to be here. Once again, the empire fucked everything up and screwed them all over.

Nyx Ulric is pressed up against her in an alleyway. Under any other circumstances, it would have been incredibly nice. As it is, he had pulled her from the rubble of a ship and into the smoking ruins of a city. Not the greatest set up of events to lead to romance, especially given it all led to the death of King Regis.

("We looked for you using the tracker in your gift," he'd said. "Didn't work, really."

Stella had grimaced. No, of course it hadn't. She wasn't much one for trinkets, or silver - that was Ravus, really. She wasn't callous enough to just give away something that someone had died for, though, so she had locked it away in one of the suitcases she'd brought with her.)

Now, she palms the ring that King Regis had pressed into her hand, with a plea for her to carry it to Noctis. "We need to get out of Insomnia," she hisses.

Nyx nods, and is polite enough to bite back the 'duh' she feels emanating from him.

Light streaks across the horizon, twisted angry red by the charred clouds of ash that fill the sky. Dawn is breaking.

She stands, and clenches her fists. The cold metal of the wring is like a biting vice.

She breathes in deep. She is Stella Nox Fleuret, third princess of Tenebrae. The unruly, the spare. She is fists and fury and a razor sharp rapier.

And she's heading to Altissia.


End file.
